A Quick Tour of the NOAA Environmental Software Infrastructure and Interoperability Group

1. A Quick Tour of the NOAA Environmental Software Infrastructure and Interoperability Group Cecelia DeLuca and the ESMF team ESRL Directorate Seminar June 2, 2011

2. Outline • NESII Overview • NESII Projects • Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) • National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) • Earth System Curator • Earth System Commodity Governance (CoG) • Curator Hydrology • NOAA Climate Projection Pilot (NCPP) • TeraGrid Environmental Science Gateway • Global Interoperability Program

3. The Basics • NESII focuses on development of software infrastructure for Earth system modeling • Arrived at ESRL / CIRES on Nov 1, 2009 • Formerly the Earth System Modeling Infrastructure section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research • Started with the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) project – has grown to include numerous others • Partners and customers are from research and operational centers, weather and climate, across U.S. agencies and international organizations

4. The Vision • Develop interoperable modeling components that can connect in multiple waysImprove predictions and support research • Build advanced utilities that many models can useEnable research, promote efficiency • Enable models to be self-describingIncrease understanding and defensibility of outputs • Create workflows that automate the modeling process from beginning to endImprove productivity • Build workspaces that encourage collaborative, distributed development of models and data analysisLeverage distributed expertise

5. The Team NESII visitors:Tony Wong, intern and Jay Hnilo, NCDC

6. Key Values • Community-driven development and community ownership • Formal processes in which customers set priorities • Frequent public design reviews and demonstrations • Openness of project processes, metrics, code and information • Public storage of project records • Commitment to a globally distributed and diverse development and customer base • Distributed development and routine international collaboration

7. Outline • NESII Overview • NESII Associated Projects • Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) • National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) • Earth System Curator • Earth System Commodity Governance (CoG) • Curator Hydrology • NOAA Climate Projection Pilot (NCPP) • TeraGrid Environmental Science Gateway • Global Interoperability Program

8. Earth System Modeling Framework Started: 2002 Collaborators: Co-developed and used by NASA (GEOS-5 climate model), NOAA (NCEP weather models), Navy (global and regional models), Community Earth System Model, others Sponsors: NASA MAP, NOAA NWS and CPO, NSF SEIII, DoD HPCMP • ESMF increases code reuse and interoperability in climate, weather, coastal and other Earth system models • ESMF is based on the idea of components, sections of code that are wrapped in standard calling interfaces

9. ESMF Architecture Architecture of the GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model • Each box in the diagram is a component • Components can be arranged hierarchically, helping to organize the structure of complex models • Different modeling groups may create different kinds or levels of components

10. ESMF as anInformation Layer • Parallel generation and application of interpolation weights • Run-time compliance checking of metadata and time behavior • Fast parallel I/O • Redistribution and other parallel communications • Automated documentation of models and simulations (new) • Ability to run components in workflows and as web services (new) Applications of information layer Structured model information stored in ESMF wrappers Attributes: CF conventions, ISO standards, METAFOR Common Information Model Standard metadata ESMF data structures Standard data structures Component Field Grid Clock User data is referenced or copied into ESMF structures Native model data structures modules grids timekeeping fields

11. ESMF Regridding • ESMF Offline: • Application which can be automatically built as part of ESMF • Application generates a netCDF weight file from two netCDF grid files • Supports SCRIP format grid files, and a custom ESMF unstructured format mpirun –np 32 ESMF_RegridWeightGen –s src_grid.nc –d dst_grid.nc –m bilinear –w weights.nc • Integrated: • ESMF library subroutine calls which do interpolation during model run • Can get weights or feed directly into ESMF parallel sparse matrix multiply • Can be used without ESMF components call ESMF_FieldRegridStore(srcField=src, dstField=dst, regridMethod=ESMF_REGRID_METHOD_BILINEAR, routehandle=rh) call ESMF_FieldRegrid(srcField=src, dstField=dst, routehandle=rh)

12. ESMF Offline Supported Grids RESULT: “use of the parallel ESMF offline regridding capability has reduced the time it takes to create CLM surface datasets from hours to minutes” - Mariana Vertenstein, NCAR • Grids with spherical (lon, lat) coordinates – any pair of: • Global 2D logically rectangular grids • Regional 2D logically rectangular grids • 2D unstructured meshes composed of polygons with any number of sides: triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons,… • Multi-patch grids (e.g. cubed spheres) currently supported via unstructured format HOMME Cubed Sphere Grid with Pentagons Courtesy Mark Taylor of Sandia Regional Grid FIM Unstructured Grid Courtesy ESRL GSD

13. Integrated Supported Grids In addition, integrated regridding supports Cartesian (x,y) coordinates: • Regridding between any pair of: • 2D meshes composed of triangles and quadrilaterals • 2D logically rectangular Grids composed of a single patch • Bilinear regridding between any pair of: • 3D meshes composed of hexahedrons • 3D logically rectangular Grids composed of a single patch 2D Unstructured Mesh From www.ngdc.noaa.gov 3D Grid 3D Unstructured Mesh

14. National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) Started: 2010 Collaborators: Tri-agency (NOAA, Navy, Air Force) consortium of operational weather prediction centers, with participation from NOAA GFDL and NASA modelers Sponsors: NOAA NWS and Navy • ESMF allows for many levels of components, types of components, and types of connections • In order to achieve greater interoperability, usage and content conventions and component templates are needed • This collaboration is building a “NUOPC Layer” that constrains how ESMF is used, and introduces metadata and other content standards • The initial pilot project (to be delivered June 2011) focuses on atmosphere-ocean coupling in NCEP NEMS and Navy NOGAPS and COAMPS codes

15. A Common Model Architecture NUOPC partners have agreed on a subset of components whose interactions will be standardized

16. Earth System Curator Started: 2005 Collaborators: METAFOR , NCAR, DOE PCMDI, Earth System Grid Federation, NOAA GFDL, Georgia Institute of Technology Sponsors: NSF SEIII, NASA MAP, NOAA GIP • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments rely on data generated by Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPS), where different scenarios are tested across many models • For the last IPCC assessment, there was little metadata available about the runs performed • The Curator project collaborated on a comprehensive metadata schema for climate models, and implemented a metadata display in the Earth System Grid data distribution portal

17. ESG Metadata Display This screen shot shows a real CMIP5 run as it appears in an ESGF portal RESULT: MUCH more information about climate models used in assessments, in browsable, searchable form

18. Earth System CoG Started: 2009 Collaborators: NCAR, Eart System Grid Federation, University of Michigan, CU Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System Sponsors: NSF CDI • Will facilitate collaborative model building, evaluation and analysis • Project hosting and indexing with connections to data and analysis services through the Earth System Grid Federation • Emphasis on encouraging best practices in project management, “commoditized governance” • Templates for project layout so information is easy to find • Peer or parent/child connections between projects • Communications between projects • Pilot project is 2012 workshop on comparison of atmospheric dynamical cores (previously supported 2008 workshop)

19. 2008 Dynamical Core Colloquium on CoG CoG prototype includes data search, wikis, and communications

20. Curator Hydrology Started: 2009 Collaborators: University of South Carolina, University of Michigan Sponsors: NOAA GIP • A new perspective on climate impacts modeling • Instead of what do we “put in” the climate model … • How do we create a linked network of models that multiple communities can use?

21. Design Goals

22. Climate-Hydro Coupling • Hydrological impact studies can be improved when forced with data from climate models [Zeng et al., 2003; Yong et al., 2009] • Ideally the coupling would be two-way • A technology gap exists: • Many hydrological models run on personal computers • Most climate models run on high performance supercomputers • Existing frameworks: ESMF (climate/weather) and OpenMI (hydrology) can connect these types of models • ESMF and OpenMI components can be operated as web services that can be used to communicate across a distributed network • Both ESMF and OpenMI are widely used

23. Prototype Climate-Hydro System Personal Computer • SWAT (hydrology model) runs on PC • CAM (atmospheric model) runs on HPC • Wrappers for both SWAT and CAM provide OpenMI interface to each model • Driver (OpenMI Configuration Editor) uses OpenMI interface to timestep through models via wrappers Driver OpenMI SWAT CAM OpenMI Wrapper • Access to CAM across the network provided by ESMF Web Services • CAM output data written to NetCDF files and streamed to CAM wrapper via ESMF Web Services • Using prototype to explore feasibility of 2-way coupling High Performance Computer Data Files ESMF Web Services ESMF CAM Component From Saint, iEMSs 2010

24. NOAA Climate Projection Pilot Started: 2010 Collaborators: Mainly NOAA PSD, NCAR RAL, many others participating Sponsors: NOAA CPO • Developing a portal and associated services to deliver information about the local and regional effects of climate change • Still in formative stages • Defining pilot projects • Thinking about implementation strategies • Investigating prior art and related projects • NESII is serving as a technical coordinator

25. TeraGrid Environmental Science Gateway Started: 2008 Collaborators: NCAR CISL and CESM, Purdue University Sponsors: NSF TeraGrid • Creates an end-to-end, self-documenting workflow for running the Community Earth System Model (CESM) • GUI configuration and submission of runs through the Purdue CESM portal • ESMF is used within CESM to organize and output extensive model metadata • Data and metadata is archived back to an Earth System Grid Federation Gateway, where it can be searched and browsed • Currently have a working prototype

26. CESM portal ESG gateway Gateway Architecture User requests Account DB Token Mgr TG MyProxy CESM Web Services Data/ Metadata Track Status Create Case Configure Case Submit Case Authentication/ Authorization Transfer Files Job Management Debugging Post-process Publish Data Publish Metadata Output Output Jobs ESG Data Publisher Scratch Storage iRODS

27. NOAA Global Interoperability Program Started: 2009 Collaborators: NOAA GFDL, PMEL, GSD, and NCDC, Unidata, NCAR, CSU, University of Michigan Sponsors: NOAA CPO • GIP builds software infrastructure that • can be used in the weather, water, and climate disciplines, and for training modelers • integrates and automates workflows • NESII lead DeLuca coordinates the project

28. Building Along Workflows

29. Building Across Disciplines coordination coordination RESULT: Better coordination of infrastructure development across disparate groups

30. The Vision • Develop interoperable modeling components that can connect in multiple waysImprove predictions and support research • Build advanced utilities that many models can useEnable research, promote efficiency • Enable models to be self-describingIncrease understanding and defensibility of outputs • Create workflows that automate the modeling process from beginning to endImprove productivity • Build workspaces that encourage collaborative, distributed development of models and data analysisLeverage distributed expertise

31. Questions? • For more information, links and references, see our newish group page: http://esrl.noaa.gov/nesii/ • Please join us for an open house following this talk in GB132!